


That the State Suffer No Harm

by Sineala



Category: Roma sub Rosa Series - Steven Saylor
Genre: Gen, Politics, Treason, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:31:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Gordianus the Finder entirely fails to help Cicero defend Gaius Rabirius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That the State Suffer No Harm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lysimache](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lysimache/gifts).



> Set approximately halfway through _Catilina's Riddle_ , here is a small Treat concerning the _Pro Rabirio perduellionis reo_. (I am now really hoping that this was the Pro Rabirio you wanted.) This story could have been much longer, I know, but I figure you know how the trial went, and mostly I wanted to present some exposition in the style of the novels.
> 
> It is gen like the book is gen, which is to say that Gordianus kind of has a thing for Catilina. Because everyone has a thing for Catilina.
> 
> I am not a classicist, so please forgive any mistakes. Also I do not think my identity will remain secret for very long; Lysimache has probably guessed it correctly by the end of this note.

"No, thank you, Gordianus, that won't be necessary." Cicero waved off the food and wine, as I'd expected he might; I dismissed Belbo, and we were alone in Eco's office, or at least as alone as we could reasonably get. I hoped no one was eavesdropping this time.

"Now you will tell me what this is all about, eh?" I smiled a little; Cicero did not.

He was folding back the hood of his cloak. He had been taking pains not to be seen as he came here, and it had been very important lately -- or so Marcus Caelius had assured me -- that he not be seen with me. I hoped that no one who might have seen him on the street had recognized him. He had taken to wearing armor in public, when he went about his consular duties; hopefully any onlookers would expect him dressed thus, and not the man who sat here in a poor man's cloak and tunic. I wondered what had brought him. If it was important enough for him to be sneaking into my son's house at night to see me, surely it would be the heart of this whole matter.

But Cicero was shaking his head. "In time, old friend."

I stared. "I have done everything you asked of me, Cicero. I have opened my house and given my hospitality to Catilina. I have dined with him, bathed with him, treated him as a friend. I have pretended to be at odds with you. I have had a great number of confusing exchanges with your protege Caelius. I am too old for these political games."

Now Cicero smiled, but only faintly. "You cannot afford to be ignorant of them, not in these times."

"I will see my son Meto made a man," I muttered, "and then I will return to the farm. But if you have not come here to tell me exactly why you have asked me to do these things, then why are you here?"

Cicero sat back a little in the chair, steepling his fingers. The flickering light of the oil-lamp played over his face in a strange, foreboding way; it had me in mind of the conspiracies of Catilina's that Caelius had been all too eager to tell me about. I wanted none of it.

"Ah," he said, softly. "You hadn't heard. I'm defending a man in the forum tomorrow."

I blinked, confused. No, I hadn't heard; I had only just arrived in Rome, after all. Did Cicero mean to hire me?

"I am not the Finder any longer." I said the words as simply as possible, so that he might understand exactly what I meant when I said I wasn't doing this. "And even if I were, I would like more than a night to track down a man's true murderer for you."

He was still smiling. "I did not come here to hire you for that." He shrugged. "Besides, I'm afraid that in this case my client truly did kill the man. Or, rather, he was very much involved in his death, which amounts to the same thing. So there is little you could do for him."

I raised an eyebrow. "Surely, as consul, you have better things to do with your time than defend a simple murder charge, and a man who is already guilty of it?"

Cicero's face lit up, then, as if he'd been waiting for me to say exactly that. "Oh, but the charge isn't murder."

A riddle. Another riddle, like that nonsense about the head without a body, the body without a head. My mouth felt suddenly dry as I remembered how that had led to, in fact, a headless body. I had to hear the rest of it now; if more men were going to turn up dead every time Cicero or one of his friends said something so sphyngic, I had better know about it. I sighed.

"Fine," I said. "Tell me how your admitted murderer is being charged for a thing that is not murder, and why in the world you are defending him for it if you know him to be guilty." The words left a bitter taste in my mouth. "Is he, perhaps, a client of yours? A patron?"

And Cicero... changed the subject. "Gordianus," he said, striking a pose that reminded me half of an Egyptian philosopher I knew once, and half of the beginning of one of his speeches at the Rostra, "if you were a soldier, and you killed a man of the enemy, would that be murder?"

I decided to play his game for the moment. "If it is war, then no. I would be following orders."

"Suppose you were a common soldier." Cicero leaned forward, animated now with the passion of his strange argument. "And, oh, let us say, your centurion had ordered it."

I shrugged. "And? It would be an order." I was not a soldier, and the game was becoming rapidly less entertaining.

"Would it matter," he asked, sounding especially thoughtful, "whether your centurion's commander had given that order to him? And whether that order was a just one?"

I scowled. "Speak plainly, or not at all." I should never have come back to Rome.

There was a long silence between us.

"The man is Gaius Rabirius, who was involved in the death of Lucius Saturninus forty years ago. The charge," Cicero said, very precisely, "is high treason."

"Treason? You've lost me." I gaped, uncertain I had heard him correctly. It made no sense. Surely no one had been charged with high treason in years. Centuries, maybe. This was unbelievable.

"The election was a particularly heated one that year, I am told," explained Cicero. "Saturninus and Glaucia were allied Populares, when Saturninus was a tribune; Glaucia was campaigning for the consulship, but Gaius Memmius, one of the Optimates, seemed to have the lead." Cicero's eyes gleamed; even if I hadn't known his party beforehand, I would have now. "During the voting, the two of them hired men to beat Memmius to death. There was rioting. The Senate passed the Final Act against them -- they authorized anything that could be done to save the republic -- and Marius, the consul at the time, rounded Saturninus and Glaucia up and put them in the senate-house. A group of men climbed to the roof, picked off some tiles, and stoned the two of them to death. Marius had said he wanted to save them, of course, like any good man of the Populares, but his orders never came fast enough."

There was only disdain for Marius in Cicero's eyes, and I marveled that they could both have come from Arpinum, the same little backwater town, and yet believed such different things. One had been a man of the people and one was only for the best ones. And to look at Cicero now, the novus homo, you'd think his family had come over with Aeneas!

I frowned. "What does this have to do with anything?"

"Rabirius was one of the men who killed Saturninus. He admits his involvement."

"Does he?" It was an unfortunate turn of events for a case, but if the man's character was good enough, perhaps the judges would be willing to believe other explanations. Cicero was persuasive like that.

Cicero grimaced. "He is not certain if his blow killed Saturninus, but afterwards he carried the man's head around the dinner table while boasting."

"Ah."

"But Rabirius says, quite reasonably, that his actions were sanctioned. He was killing Saturninus as permitted by the Final Act."

I nodded. "Anything to protect the state, eh?"

"Gaius Caesar--" Cicero's nose wrinkled-- "our new Pontifex Maximus, happens to believe that such a decree was never legal -- its use based on precedent rather than law -- and therefore that any acts arising from it were not legal and the men who followed it were committing treason -- since, as you know, by the old laws a magistrate's person is inviolate. Killing a magistrate is an offense against the state."

I began to see the shape of the thing now. "So killing Saturninus was still treasonous because he was a tribune, even though the Final Act was declared against him. Rabirius took up arms against the state."

"And Caesar -- or rather, his tribune Titus Labienus, whose uncle died in the rioting, and whom Caesar has brought out to make the accusation -- wishes to have it be that the decree is illegal, invalid, and unusable, yes."

"Why drag this out now? Caesar, you, even me -- we were all children when this happened!"

"Oh, come now." Cicero just looked annoyed. "You may be living in Etruria, but surely you have noted a certain groundswell of... popular opinion, shall we say, around one of the consular candidates. Our dear Pontifex seems to think now would be an excellent time to make a few points to the Senate about the will of the people, and to put forth the idea in their minds that a man who is, oh, a consul, cannot be killed legally."

"You think Caesar is conspiring with Catilina? So that if Catilina becomes consul--" I found that I did not want to finish the thought, and I felt strange at the idea that, if all the conspiring was true, Catilina would no doubt be dead at Cicero's orders. He was dangerous, yes. I feared having him around my family, certainly. But at the same time, I wanted -- I could not quite articulate it.

"I didn't say that; you did." The denial was instant, but I had the feeling Cicero meant to suggest the thing all the same. His face took on a thoughtful cast. "Caesar might be in this for himself, for all I know. Perhaps he wants his own revolution. The gods know that the mob could love him enough for it, maybe more than they love Catilina. But he wants the Final Act undermined. He wants to pit the Senate against the people, Gordianus. He's gotten himself and his cousin appointed as judges for this. It'll be a sham. At least for Rabirius it'll be exile rather than crucifixion, although naturally I have a rather good speech written, so I hold out some hope for Rabirius' appeal to the people--"

Politics. I wanted nothing to do with it. "Why are you telling me this?"

Cicero's mouth quirked. "Because you needed to know. And you should come to the trial. I think it will be interesting."

I was already doing one mad thing for Cicero. What was one more?

As Cicero pulled his hood back up and let himself out, I had to wonder what Cicero was planning. He was consul; did he think to use the decree against Catilina? And why in the world had he wanted me to welcome Catilina to my house, then? I had done as he asked, of course. Perhaps soon there would be an explanation. Perhaps the trial would clarify matters.

Cicero could order anyone to do anything he thought necessary, with the power whose use he was set to defend. I pictured Catilina as I had last seen him, riding away from the farm, down the Cassian Way toward Rome, and I wondered if I would kill him. If I could. If I wanted to. If the Senate ordered me to.

I had no idea.

Sleepless, I lay awake for hours, and my thoughts kept returning to Catilina. We had laughed together as friends, and he had told me secrets -- the secret of his assignation with a Vestal Virgin. I had not found out the truth of the affair then, but he had offered me it freely, easily, with the manner of one who trusts he will not be betrayed. It was a good thing Cicero was not to speak against him tomorrow; I could imagine only too well how the judges might be swayed by his handsome face, by his charming manner.

In my dreams that night, Catilina smiled at me and held out his hand, beckoning me closer -- to join him? To join his cause? I reached out, as one does in dreams, and in the instant before our hands touched, I woke.

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of AU-ish assumptions are necessary for there to be a place to fit this story into canon: namely, that the _Pro Rabirio_ took place later, and Gordianus went to Rome for Meto's birthday earlier. The dates I can find suggest that the trial took place in the first half of 63 BC, and the novel itself opens on the Kalends of June and states that Gordianus hasn't been to Rome for a year. And when he does go to Rome a couple months later he is immediately swept up in all the election goings-on. So, really, just imagine that the trial is a little later (so that Gordianus can plausibly be there) and that Gordianus gets to Rome a little earlier (so that there can be some breathing room between this and the consular elections as depicted in the novel).
> 
> Showing my work (and hoping I didn't get it wrong), here are some things I consulted, because I would just like to say that Wikipedia has a really lousy summary of this case:
> 
> H. Grose-Hodge, _A Case of High Treason_. Cambridge University Press, 1956.
> 
> Th. N. Mitchell, [Cicero and the Senatus "consultum ultimum"](http://www.jstor.org/stable/4435179). Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Bd. 20, H. 1 (1st Qtr., 1971), pp. 47-61.
> 
> Catharine Saunders, [The Consular Speeches of Cicero](http://www.jstor.org/stable/4387443). The Classical Weekly, Vol. 10, No. 20 (Mar. 19, 1917), pp. 153-156.
> 
> Ronald Syme, [The Allegiance of Labienus](http://www.jstor.org/stable/296654). The Journal of Roman Studies, Vol. 28, Part 2 (1938), pp. 113-125.
> 
> Any remaining errors are entirely my fault.


End file.
